. . . A priest forever, according to the order of Melchisedec.
—the Rite of Ordination
THE Vatican last week announced that all Catholic priests would henceforth be asked to make an annual public affirmation of their vows of celibacy and obedience. The day chosen for this oath was Holy Thursday—the feast day that, in Roman Catholic theology, commemorates Christ's founding of the priesthood. Obliquely, the decree was yet another negative answer from Rome to the Dutch Pastoral Council (TIME, Jan. 19), which last month advocated optional celibacy for priests. On a deeper level, the proposal was a nervous, defensive papal response to a more enduring crisis: the most notable mass defection of priests (and nuns) from the service of the church since the Reformation.
Honest Rebellion
History's most famous priestly rebel, Martin Luther, proudly uttered his defiance of church authority—"Here I stand; I can do no other"—before the Diet of Worms. With an equivalent sense of drama, some of today's priests-in-exodus have proclaimed their departures at televised press conferences or in defiant, soul-searching manifestoes. But whether their departures are public or private, the vast majority are in honest rebellion against what they feel is an authoritarian, outmoded church organization that unfairly limits their freedoms and responsibilities and frustrates their desire to serve God by serving man. Catholics are not alone in experiencing this problem. Increasingly, U.S. Protestants are losing ministers as well, often for similar reasons; as many as 3,000 Protestant clergymen are leaving U.S. pulpits every year.
"We have been born in an important age full of kaleidoscopic experiments, adventures and clashes," writes Nikos Kazantzakis in Report to Greco, "not only between the virtues and the vices, as formerly, but rather—and this is the most tragic of all—between the virtues themselves." All too many of the priests and nuns who are turning in their collars and habits today find themselves caught between the passive virtue of obedience to an ancient, troubled structure and the active virtue of creative response to a turbulent world.
No one knows exactly how many religious have jumped over the wall—partly because it is so easy today for a priest, nun or brother simply to take a leave of absence and never return. One Vatican official estimates that 6,500 nuns (out of 1,175,000 worldwide) left last year alone. As for priests, the Vatican acknowledges that it has on file at least 10,000 requests from priests asking to be dispensed from their vows, and there are undoubtedly thousands more who have left without asking at all. In the U.S. alone, an organization called Bearings for Re-Establishment, which helps former priests, ministers and other religious find their way into the secular world, handles about 165 new priest-clients each month—2,000 per year—and this may be less than half of the total number in the U.S. who leave.